The school board meeting also went badly:
They sent us into this woman’s office, and she was like the head of the school board or something. And I thought we were going down to tell our side of the story. And we get in there and she starts saying, “William has to be put, has to be placed somewhere. This can’t go on.” So I started to tell her my side of the story how I had witnesses and everything. And she said, “You can’t talk.” And I said, “I can’t talk at all?” And she said to me, “You can’t talk.” And I said, “Why am I here?” And she said, “Because you’re here for me to tell you how it’s going to be.”
Ms. Yanelli, feeling suspicious that the woman was “prejudiced,” expressed her frustration openly:
She’s a Black woman and everybody there is Black. We were the only ones there that’s white. And I don’t have nothing against Black or white, but that day I felt like I was being prejudiced against, like they were being prejudiced against me. Like at last they got a white kid or something. That’s how I felt that day. So I looked at her right in her face, this right nose to nose, and I said, “You’re a nasty, nasty woman. I don’t like you and I curse you.” And I got up and walked out. Big Billy was so embarrassed that I screamed in her face.
Thus, two major interactions with educators had ended badly, and the situation was not resolved in the way that Ms. Yanelli had hoped. She discussed the problem with one of the women whose houses she cleaned, and her employer made arrangements for a pro bono lawyer. The lawyer “told [her] what to do,” which resulted in another meeting:
Then we went in front of another part of the school board and the woman sat us down. And I explained to the woman just like I’m explaining to you that we had witnesses and the principal wouldn’t let me involve them and everything. And she dropped everything.48
As when Billy was younger, his mother’s frequent interventions with “the school” were filled with frustration. And, as in the past, Ms. Yanelli’s efforts generally did not yield an ideal outcome. There may have been many factors involved, but Ms. Yanelli herself reported that she was “not educated.” She felt her relative lack of education impaired her ability to interact with educators.
The urban school district that included the Yanellis’ neighborhood was vastly bigger and more bureaucratic than relatively small suburban school districts. This difference may have lowered her chances of negotiating successful outcomes. It is also possible the educators, who were middle-class, treated Ms. Yanelli and other working-class and poor parents with less deference than they did middle-class parents. Even so, Ms. Yanelli had only a vague understanding of the bureaucratic sequence for due process. Her first meeting at the school board offices, for instance, was likely intended to be for scheduling only—a clerical first step in which the date would be set for a formal hearing during which the Yanellis could present their case. The important point, however, is that the Yanelli family’s considerable efforts on Billy’s behalf did not ensure his educational success. He dropped out of school. Moreover, it is relatively unusual, both in my sample and in other studies of parent involvement, for working-class and poor parents to intervene either as frequently or over as long a period as the Yanellis did.49
Even though working-class and poor parents were less interventionist than middle-class parents, they had strong views about how their children’s lives were unfolding, as comments from the Taylors show. Tyrec had an erratic work history. His parents reported that he was fired from one position for tardiness, that he quit another, outraged over the manager’s unfair treatment of employees, and that he then was unemployed for many months. Ms. Taylor was extremely agitated about this period of unemployment. At one point during the interview, she began to yell about the importance of Tyrec finding work.50 He had to be employed full-time in order to support himself. Ms. Taylor’s anxiety about Tyrec’s future was palpable. She ached for her son to go to college, but her own financial situation made it impossible for her to help much with the cost of college (she thought she “could help him get a loan” and possibly help with books or other expenses). She continued to dream that someday “he would be a successful lawyer.”
The youth, including Tyrec, were aware of their parents’ hopes and dreams for them:
ANNETTE: Did anyone talk to you about the possibility of going to college?
TYREC: Yeah, they came to our school. Colleges came to our school. I could have went to SUNY Geneseo, but I never really like took no SATs. I wasn’t really thinking about going away to no university. I could have. My mom and them probably wanted me to, but I was like . . . after high school I really wanted to do what I wanted to do.
Tyrec also said, “My mom and them kept trying to get me to go to school.” But Ms. Taylor’s approach differed in key ways from that of the Marshall and Tallinger families. She cajoled, pressured, and nagged, but she viewed the actual interactions with institutions (e.g., signing Tyrec up for the SAT, filling out college applications, visiting colleges, and narrowing the pool for applications) as outside the purview of parents. These steps were understood to be the rightful responsibility of the school.51 She and Tyrec’s father were involved parents. They went to great lengths to help their son graduate from high school, and Mr. Taylor paid the tuition for Tyrec’s first semester of community college. But Tyrec did not complete his courses for the term, and Ms. Taylor felt that fundamentally, the decision to pursue college was up to Tyrec.
Both parents repeatedly intervened to help Tyrec move ahead in life. Mr. Taylor hired a lawyer to represent his son when he was arrested as a juvenile, helped pay for his car, and got another lawyer to help with the tickets Tyrec accumulated. Together, the Taylors forestalled many negative outcomes (e.g., additional arrests, dropping out of high school); nevertheless, they were unable to help Tyrec realize other goals (e.g., college enrollment and graduation). In Ms. Taylor’s view, her son is “coming along. He isn’t doing as well as I wish he was doing, but he’s coming along.” Mr. Taylor said, “He’s surviving. He’s staying one step ahead of the cheetah.”
Middle-class parents would likely find it difficult to be in a situation where their children were only “one step ahead of the cheetah.” Likewise, most middle-class youth in that situation would likely seek the comfort of their parents’ interventions. In many of the working-class and poor families, however, both parents and youth conceptualized young adults as “grown,” and therefore capable of solving (most of) their own problems. For example, although, as noted earlier, Wendy declined to attend Alvernia, the small Catholic college where she had been accepted, she did decide to enroll at the local community college.
I even applied to Community. I was going to Community in January. I had applied. I went down. They wanted me to go to night school: it was a whole free [learning disability] program, and I had to go for six months.
Unfortunately, these initial efforts faltered. On the basis of her placement test results, she was told that she would have to take remedial courses, for which she would not earn college credit. This seemed unreasonable to her, given her honors in high school:
I want to go to a class to get credit first. They said, “No.” They wouldn’t do it. If I paid for the [learning disability] program then I could do it. . . . I tried to talk to the guy. I don’t want to take [the non-credit course], and they didn’t want to hear it!
Unlike many of the middle-class youth, when faced with these complications, Wendy did not involve her parents. She saw these problems as her own to overcome.
Wendy felt that the program staff misunderstood the nature of her disabilities. She wanted a program similar to the one that she had been offered at Alvernia:
[At Alvernia] I would have been in a regular class. [There would have been a] note taker and testing accommodation: [for a] three-hour test I would have six hours. The teacher could read the test to me. [I would] have chances to retake the test to get a better grade. Alvernia was going to have that plan.
The lack of flexibility at the community
college bothered Wendy. She did not go back. When asked if she had considered having her parents go to the community college to help her, Wendy bristled. Noting her status as an autonomous, responsible adult, she replied,
I was old enough to make my own decisions. I knew what was wrong with me. My parents could have come down, and they [the program officers] basically would have told them the same thing. I didn’t want that. I am eighteen. I am old enough to make my own decisions!
A middle-class parent such as Ms. Marshall might have called the program administrator, submitted documentation on the nature of her daughter’s disability, hired a private psychologist to test her, or paid privately for the learning disabled program for one semester. Wendy, who at the time was only seventeen years old, could not think of any options other than accepting the remedial placement or not enrolling. Since she was “grown,” it was unacceptable to involve her parents; furthermore, Wendy did not think that her parents would do anything different than what she had already done. Thus, despite her original intent, Wendy never attended college.
In some instances, working-class and poor parents were quite effective in helping their children sort out problems with institutions. Billy Yanelli enjoyed recreational use of marijuana, but during his apprenticeship as a unionized house painter, he was required to submit to random drug tests. After one of Billy’s drug tests turned up “hot,” he was warned by the union. Mr. Yanelli was also a member of the union and was able to smooth the situation over for his son. Despite more than three violations, which should have (per union policy) led to his dismissal, Billy was not expelled from the union. Notably, this institution had a different character than educational institutions, and Mr. Yanelli had a status equal to that of the union leaders. Thus, the situation he faced when he intervened on his son’s behalf was quite different from the ones Ms. Yanelli confronted.
Unquestionably, working-class and poor parents provided valuable emotional, financial, and social support for their children. They cosigned car loans, paid for car insurance, provided meals, listened to tales of romantic woes, and babysat grandchildren. They desperately wanted their children to succeed. Yet, as when their children were young, with regard to educational institutions, these parents continued to expect that the experts would help their children succeed. They did not assertively manage their children’s high school careers; and once the children had either graduated or left high school, their parents considered them autonomous adults.
“It Broke My Heart”
Overall, the working-class and poor youth in Unequal Childhoods aspired to graduate from high school and go to college, but compared to the middle-class youth, they were less successful in realizing this dream. Most achieved educational levels similar to those of their parents, many of whom were high school dropouts. Given these parents’ own educational experiences, we might expect them to be relatively untroubled when their children dropped out of high school or did not persist in college. Instead, working-class and poor parents displayed striking levels of pain as they discussed their children’s truncated educational careers.52 Ms. Taylor, for instance, looked sad and put her hand over her heart when I asked her about Tyrec dropping out of community college after one semester. She said that she “felt helpless” and was “disappointed, you know, as a mother would be.” Noting the independence of young adults and the limited power of parents, however, she said, “You know, you just can’t do it. They have to do it on their own.”
Other parents echoed this view. They also drew attention to the wounds parents experienced when their dreams for their children’s educational careers were dashed. For example, Ms. Driver took Wendy’s refusal to go to college personally: “I was hurt. I wanted my child to go to college.” Harold’s failure to remain in high school until he graduated enraged his mother. Although it was two years after Harold had dropped out, Ms. McAllister grew angry as she recalled her son’s action: “When Harold didn’t graduate, I was mad. (voice rising) All he had to do was graduate, two months—April, May, and June.” Discussing Billy’s decision to leave high school in his sophomore year, Mr. Yanelli, who was a high school dropout, said, “It broke my heart.”
Middle-class parents generally were spared this kind of crushing disappointment. They clearly empathized with their children over setbacks such as not getting into their first-choice college, but typically these parents seemed less deeply affected than the working-class and poor parents. Ms. Tallinger, for example, reported that she was “really sad” for Garrett when Stanford did not work out, noting wistfully, “It would have been great.” Still, the Handlons, the only middle-class couple in the study whose child did not go to college, were very unhappy with their daughter’s decision. Melanie enrolled at Swan Community College, but as noted earlier, she stopped going to class before the semester ended. For Ms. Handlon, who had an associate’s degree, and Mr. Handlon, who had a master’s degree, Melanie’s short-lived college career was a major disappointment.
ANNETTE: And how did you feel about this when this was going on?
MS. HANDLON: Disappointed, but it’s her life, I, you know, . . . at this point she’s gonna start making the decisions, and I try to support her in what she decides. But I was disappointed, yes.
Ms. Handlon appeared to feel ashamed that her daughter was not attending a four-year residential college.53 She wished that she had intervened more.54 Hence, as other research suggests, being middle-class did not guarantee that children would become college graduates.55
Parents’ reports in the follow-up interviews indicate that they experienced the most pain when their children were in the process of aborting their educational careers. Over time, all the parents seem to have successfully adjusted their expectations. Most were proud of their children, pleased by how they were doing, and grateful to see them moving steadily into independent, adult lives. Yet nationally, and among the Unequal Childhoods families, working-class and poor children were less likely to graduate from high school and enroll in college. As a result, their parents were much more likely to experience heartbreak over educational disappointments than were middle-class parents.
For their part, the working-class and poor youths showed a striking awareness of the sacrifices their parents had made on their behalf and a knowledge of the burdens these sacrifices entailed. Tyrec knew his parents had borrowed money for his education, and he revealed a sense that at the very least, he owed them a greater commitment to his studies. Katie, who was frank about her disapproval of her mother’s continued drinking, nevertheless told me that she was “proud” of her mother for getting off welfare. Some of the young adults were helping their parents financially. When Wendy was in high school, she held two jobs. The money she earned mainly paid for her own expenses, but she also sometimes gave her mother money to help with family bills. Harold noted that he “loves [his] Mom” and said he “would do anything” for her. He regularly gave her money, often $20 a couple of times per month or whenever she asked. Hence, while middle-class parents were transferring economic resources to their young adults, the working-class and poor young adults were often transferring resources to their parents. The middle-class youth also loved their families, and some were effusive about their parents. Garrett, for instance, glowed as he talked about how wonderful his mom and dad are. The significant difference between these young people and those in working-class and poor families lies in the fact that middle-class youths were much less aware of how much their parents had done on their behalf.
The Importance of Class-Based Cultural Repertoires
Does social class matter in American society? Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that it does not. If that is so, then young people’s educational and work outcomes should be the result of their own aspirations, abilities, efforts, perseverance, and imagination.56 If class position is of little importance, then as the members of each new generation reach young adulthood, they should be poised for a fresh start at the race for success, all facing the same opportunity to “find the
ir way” toward a comfortable and fulfilling life, based on their own innate talents. This is the American dream. The American reality is different. A key finding of Unequal Childhoods is that class does matter. In real life, the educational and work outcomes of young people are closely tied to the class position of their parents. Because social class is a significant force, existing social inequality gets reproduced over time, regardless of each new generation’s aspirations, talent, effort, and imagination.57
Unequal Childhoods used qualitative methods to study the rituals of daily life that families experience and the influence of these rituals on the development of youths’ life chances. The results of the follow-up study provide further support for the argument that a pattern of social inequality is being reproduced. Parents’ cultural practices play a role.58 The commitment to concerted cultivation, whereby parents actively fostered and developed children’s talents and skills did not, it turns out, wane over time. Even as children became autonomous adolescents with driver’s licenses, jobs, and dorm rooms, the middle-class parents closely monitored and intervened in their lives. A few decades ago many similarly aged young people would have been married, with children of their own. But the middle-class youth in this study, now nineteen to twenty-one years old, appeared to be needy and, in crucial ways, still under the wing of their mothers and fathers. By contrast, although similarly aged, the working-class and poor young adults appeared to be more independent. They were very grateful for the love and support their parents had given them in the face of scarce resources. But they were, in Wendy’s words, “grown.” For their part, working-class and poor parents generally accepted that their children had become autonomous adults. They offered help when that seemed possible, and they ached with disappointment when the dreams they had held for their children’s futures grew increasingly unattainable.
Unequal Childhoods Page 40